Ollie. Asexual/Panromantic/Genderqueer. They/Them/Their or Xe/Xem/Xyr. Writer, crafter, baseball fan, TTRPG enthusiast. Whatever you actually followed me for, I should probably apologize. Unless you followed me because of one of my fanfics, in which case I should DEFINITELY apologize.
Spock is a Jewish-coded fucking Vulcan who grew up on an alien world and was played by and basically created by a Jewish man and in 2019 you guys are still drawing him in Christmas sweaters and writing 18 billion Christmas fics about him
Reminder that in the Star Trek extended universe novels Amanda Grayson is made explicitly Jewish and thus Spock is not merely Jewish coded, he’s straight up, undeniably, legal under any movements definition, Jewish.
Okay but imagine tiny angry almost-thirteen-year-old Worf, who knows that throwing him a huge bar mitzvah would make his parents so, so happy, but is also really not sure about what that would mean about his relationship to his Klingon heritage, or how Jewish a Klingon adoptee can even be.
And there’s the sound of a transporter beam from outside. And a couple minutes later, Sergei knocks at his door, literally vibrating with excitement. “Worf. You have a visitor.”
“I am Spock,” the visitor says, as though Worf doesn’t recognize him, as though anyone wouldn’t recognize him. But then he introduces himself again, with his full Vulcan name; and then a third time, with his Hebrew name.
“I heard,” he continues, “about a boy asking the same questions I did, at his age. It is an old man’s vanity, to assume my own experiences hold any wisdom for the young. Nevertheless, if my counsel would be of value–” he tilts his head as though that’s a joke, though at whose expense Worf can’t tell “–I am at your disposal.”
Klingons killed their gods so their religion does not include worshipping anyone and is compatible with Judaism. One would however need to abstain from blood-wine and some other Klingon traditional cuisine. I’m now rotating the group Voyager runs into in my mind and how they are actually Jewish coded in contrast to the other Klingons
Vulcans were generally polytheistic in the past but it seems that by TOS most are atheists.
Also people still assigning Christian relation to religion dynamics and catholic guilt to Bajorans who have been explicitly based on Jewish and Muslim people since their inception.
Kira Nerys is not a repressed church girl for fucks sake
There was a series of short ebooks (that later got published in paperback omnibuses, which is how I found them) called the Starfleet Corps of Engineers, or S.C.E. It focuses mainly on one particular ship, the captain of whom is Benjamin Goldstein. His wife is a rabbi back on Earth. (This leads to a conversation between Goldstein and Scotty - who, after being rescued from the time lock in TNG, was put in charge of the whole of the S.C.E. - wherein Goldstein invites Scotty for dinner next time they're all on Earth, Scotty asks if Rachel can cook a haggis, and Goldstein replies, "Sorry, she's a Jewish mother, she's legally required to only serve food that is edible.")
In one of the books, he's talking to someone about his granddaughter Emily, who was at college, overheard two Klingons mocking humans for not having any proper battle history, turned on them, and hit them with the full force of five thousand years of violence and oppression against the Jewish people. One of them later came back to apologize to her and find out more. Goldstein concludes this anecdote by saying that Emily is bringing her new boyfriend home with her for the holidays and, I quote, "Rachel is desperately trying to find a recipe for kosher blood pie."
Whoever he's talking to tells him to reach out to Worf's parents for advice.
“one man yaoi” fight club image printed on a school printer
sofabed that fits perfectly under my loft
saw, saw ii, saw iii, saw iv, and saw vi special editions on dvd
ceramic cat painted to look like my old cat binx
fancy victorian-esque mirror i got at goodwill for 8$
thrice-annotated copy of welcome to night vale by joseph fink and jeffrey cranor
the complete calvin and hobbes
Remaining time: 6 days 6 hours
@moldfucker @dogboycarriebrownstein @zz0mbiex @jinglyjangly-theclowm @desolendate @hopelessplutonium @jame-dumb and anyone else who sees this and wants to :)
a few months ago my friend called me and told me she was moving back up near me from 7 hours south in the middle of nowhere and asked if i would help her because she couldn’t move the furniture by herself and the town was so small there was no moving company (there were actually only 5 or six businesses in the whole town including both restaurants) and she had no one else down there to ask.
And even though money is pretty tight for her, she told me I could name my price if I would help her, because it was so far away.
I told her she was a dummy for thinking i would take her money but that i would accept the traditional helping-a-friend-move price: a meal (i know she would feel wrong about herself if she didn’t do something for me in return, that’s just how she is) Tradition suggests pizza and beer, we opted for enchiladas and a margarita.
we crashed on the floor of the empty place and left back north in the morning - when we got back to the city three more friends met us at her storage place (the place she was moving into wouldn’t be vacant for a couple months) and we started to move all her stuff up to a storage room on the THIRD FLOOR (because large city storage places be like that)
we had just taken the first box out of the truck when the (only) lady working there walked by and told us they closed in an hour and twenty minutes, and she couldn’t stay even a little late because she had to get to her other job.
One hour twenty minutes. To completely un-jenga a large uhaul and re-tetris it back into a similar sized room on the third floor.
We all just, shared a look, took off hoodies, and got the fuck down to business.
It was actually.. I still cherish look we passed around. The tiny eyebrow quirks and chin nods. The eye glints. The bigger breath we each took as we prepared to kick it up several gears. That moment of wordless connection, when we all just silently agreed that we were damn well going to do the impossible and didn’t even waste the time it would take to say anything, just got to it.
And we did it too. Finished with exactly two full minutes to spare. And then we all went for dinner and drinks to celebrate. And my friend’s friends that came to help? Two of them were acquaintances/friends of mine already. Like I lived with one for a year a decade ago sort of thing. But this experience? Brought us all closer. Made myself a new friend too.
And the friend i helped move? She and I are closer than ever because of it.
When i left our storage success diner to go home, she asked me again if I was sure i wouldn’t take any money.
I said “I ever tell you when I was 22 I went down to Hollywood to try that scene out? Anyway ten months later, when I just couldn’t do it anymore, and needed to come back, I called one of my best friends and said i can’t do this anymore i need to come back.
You know what he said? He said: I’ll be there tomorrow. Not how much will you pay me, not what do i get out of it, not will you be able to cover my gas, just: I’ll be there tomorrow. Okay? You’re my friend. If you need help, I’m going to be there”
If helping someone move ruins your friendship, you’re doing at least one of those two things very wrong.
we need to periodically remind everyone that a headline not including a person's name isn't an attempt to erase their identity from the narrative, it's just not good practice to put someone's name in a headline unless the reader can be expected to already know who they are
A strange genie appears and has an offer for you. You’ll be cured of all, you’ll have a stable job you’re happy with, and you’ll basically just live the best life you can imagine. However, there’s a catch—you’ll have to relive one specific grade level from middle or high school (the genie is American).
okay I have like zero reach on this site and this is almost certainly not going anywhere, BUT.
Friends, Romans, countrymen...tell me about YOUR weirdly specific beef with a piece of media because of their flagrant disregard of your personal area of expertise/niche interest.
I'm not talking about "I'm a biologist and I don't understand why Project Hail Mary is so great" type of things. Not the kind of thing where the entire work is premised on [thing you know very well] and you can tell the writer doesn't. I want the really niche stuff.
For example: One of my best friends attempted to read Fifty Shades of Grey to understand why everyone hated it so much. He called me and ranted at me for like fifteen minutes solid about how he couldn't finish it because it was so wildly inaccurate...because of a throwaway line in one of the first couple chapters where Anastasia incorrectly used a couple of neuroscience terms. He never even got to the sex part.
Another example: My brother once complained to a friend that a book he was reading was "totally unrealistic" because a character who had been missing for ten years and declared dead returned to the real world and was informed he'd been awarded the Nobel Prize for Mathematics, and even if there was a Nobel Prize for Mathematics (there isn't), posthumous nominations are not permitted and you have to be presumed to be alive as of the October announcements to be eligible. His friend looked at him, looked at the book, looked back at him, and said, "[Brother], it's about fucking elves."
Wyland has said any financial recovery from the suit would support public art, ocean conservation, and environmental education through his foundation.
"This should have been an opportunity to show the world that global sports, public art, and environmental stewardship can stand together," he said. "Instead, a landmark was painted over. We want to do our part to make sure that what happened here does not become the standard for how public art is treated in cities across America."
patience my brother (and patience my friend): a TMA fanfic
[Prologue] [1] [2] || Also on AO3 and my personal website
Chapter 3: The Meaning of Home
They’d had a lot of debate, the three of them, on whether to tell the kids and how much to tell them. Something like this had always been their plan, but it was a now situation. Antony had wanted to surprise them; Susan had argued they needed time to prepare themselves, that even as young as they were they deserved to not have their world upended abruptly when it had already been overturned several times in the last year. Gillian had been somewhere in the middle, but had pointed out that the kids were surely going to notice them packing up their things, few though they may have been. In the end, the question had been settled for them when Gillian allowed Jon—with supervision—to answer the phone for the first time and he’d burst into tears before she could wrestle the receiver from his hands and discover that Paul’s mother had finally tracked down their number. Jon wouldn’t say what she said, at least not to the adults, but Susan had been the one to discover that he and Melanie were climbing out of their toddler beds and hiding in the closet to sleep. She’d extracted them, coaxed out of them at least that they were trying to keep Mabel from finding them, and promised them she would help them hide and keep safe.
Once that was established, it had actually been fairly easy to pack without telling them everything. Anything they didn’t need was “hidden” inside boxes with their parents’ things, and when the ultimate day came, Gillian “smuggled” the twins out of the house early in the morning to take a long, convoluted journey that she assured them wouldn’t be traceable. She wasn’t sure at first if they were still serious about it or if it was something of a game to them now, but Melanie’s tremulous query as to whether Susan and Antony would be able to find them without being tracked and the genuine anxiety bordering on panic in Jon’s voice when he asked if Mabel knew where Antony’s family lived and if they were heading there told her it was still in deadly earnest.
She made a mental note to work harder on getting the truth out of one of them and set to reassuring them further for the time being.
Susan and Antony were waiting for them on the platform when they reached their final stop; Melanie and Jon ran right to them and hugged them tightly. Susan had a hug for Gillian, too, and Antony had a quick kiss. In a conspiratorial stage whisper, he asked, “Did you shake off any pursuit?”
“Don’t joke. They’re truly scared,” Gillian said in his ear. A bit louder, so the twins could hear, she added, “Kept watch the whole way up. I think we escaped any notice. It helps that we look enough alike that nobody suspected a thing, don’t we, loveys?”
The train didn’t actually run to Woodley on Sundays, but the nearest station it did stop at wasn’t that far away, so that wasn’t such a problem. Once Jon and Melanie were safely strapped into the car, Antony slid into the driver’s seat and glanced in the mirror at them.
“Don’t worry,” he assured them solemnly. “She won’t find us here.”
Jon’s lower lip trembled briefly, but he nodded. Melanie gave her father a suspicious look and didn’t say anything. Gillian got the feeling neither of them particularly believed him.
It was, surprisingly, only about another five minutes before Antony turned down a narrow, sheltered street and pulled up in front of a small house. It was detached, made of red brick, with a bay window on one side and a covered porch. It had been evidently built into a small hill, but stone steps zigzagged up the lawn to the door from the driveway Antony parked the car in.
“Here we are,” Susan sang out. “Everything should be inside, but we’ll have to unpack and that won’t be a simple matter, I’m sure.”
“You haven’t been in yet?” Gillian unfastened her safety belt and reached for the restraints on the nearest car seat.
Antony got out and came around to help get the other twin out. “Of course not. We were waiting for you two.”
“Is this where we’re going to stay, Daddy?” Jon let Antony lift him out and set him on his feet, but he was staring at the house intently.
“It sure is.” Antony took Melanie from Gillian and set her next to Jon; the two of them clutched each other’s hands tightly.
Susan gave Gillian her arm to climb out of the car herself. “Who’s going to be the one to unlock?”
“Who’s got the key?” Gillian countered.
Antony held up a ring of keys. “We’ve each got a set, but I’m holding them for now.”
“Then I think you’ll need to unlock the door for us.” Gillian smiled and took Melanie’s free hand. “Lead the way, O gallant knight.”
Dutifully, Antony led them up the neat stone steps to the tidy little door. Susan and Gillian, by unspoken agreement, drew together behind the twins and urged them forward.
It was deeply unfair that Paul wasn’t here for this moment, but Gillian supposed that, in a way, he was with them and always would be. He still ought to have been physically present, should have been the one fumbling with the key or holding Jon or Melanie—or both—on his shoulders. It just didn’t seem right to be doing it without him.
Still, here they were, and they were going to have to live with that.
Gillian found herself holding her breath as Antony fitted the key into the lock, turned, and then pushed it open.
“Here we are,” he announced. “Home sweet home.”
Gillian and Susan gave exactly the same gasp of wonder and surprise at the sight. The room was large and airy, trimmed in honey stained wood, with a cathedral ceiling that met at a point high overhead and hardwood floors, a stone fireplace against one wall. The furniture hadn’t been arranged yet—the sofa, love seat, and armchairs, not to mention the end tables and book cases, were pushed against the walls—and there was a small mountain of boxes labeled LIVING ROOM in one corner under an arch formed by two rolled rugs, but Gillian could see the potential, and she liked it.
“Where did the piano come from?” Susan asked with a frown, looking in the opposite corner.
Antony shrugged. “The estate agent said the last owners left a few things behind that we were welcome to. Moving a piano isn’t cheap, I guess. Come on. Dining room is through here.”
The dining room was octagonal, with a vaulted ceiling and a chandelier, a heavy china hutch that had definitely also come with the house off to one side. Their simple, serviceable table and chairs seemed almost out of place, but Gillian thought it was nothing a good tablecloth couldn’t hide. The kitchen beyond it was almost as big again as the dining room, with cupboards built in and a pantry to one side. There would be plenty of room to work, even if Melanie and Jon insisted on helping.
“There only being one way in or out of here does seem like a fire hazard,” Susan murmured as they went back through the dining room to the living room. “I suppose the bedrooms are back this way?”
“Supposedly. Let’s see what they did.” Antony opened the first door he saw. “No, this is a utility room.”
Gillian opened the door opposite and gave a soft ah of delight. “I found the master suite.”
It was the room with the bay window, light and airy and well appointed. Unlike the main part of the house, it was carpeted in a plush dark green, and the boxes labeled BEDROOM were stacked haphazardly on the dresser. The bed had been assembled but not made, and the quilt-wrapped bundle on top of the mattress indicated the mirror was yet to be hung, but that wouldn’t be difficult. The master bath alone was easily as big as their entire flat back in London had been.
The next bedroom, relatively small but neat, had a bed and dresser but no boxes. Jon and Melanie started into it, but Susan had already opened the door at the end of the corridor and looked over her shoulder. “Oh, perfect! Jon, Melanie, this will be your room.”
Melanie tugged Jon out of the second bedroom and into the third; stepping in behind them, Gillian could see why the movers had chosen this one. It was slightly smaller than the master bedroom, but bigger than the other, with windows on three walls, two looking out on the backyard and one on the side half hidden by a shrub in need of trimming. The beds had been set up, one to either side of the back window, and the boxes labeled KIDS ROOM containing those few things they hadn’t been able to pack until that morning waited on what was clearly a window seat. The carpet in this room was a light beige, and the walls had been papered in a china blue with paler blue ornamental designs throughout it.
“The curtains ought to match in here,” Susan said thoughtfully. “We’ll get those up so nobody can see in if you don’t want them to. Will that make you feel safe?”
“The curtains came to visit, too?” Melanie asked, sounding slightly suspicious.
Antony laughed gently, knelt down, and scooped the twins up. “The curtains came to live here, Little Moth. Just like we did. This is our home now.”
“Really?” Jon’s eyes were huge.
“Really.” Antony kissed Jon’s cheek, then Melanie’s.
The children looked at each other, then back up at Antony. Susan went over to a box she had made a mark in the corner of and pulled it open. “Let’s get these curtains hung up first. Then we can start unpacking, and then we can make our first dinner in the house. And I think a cake is in order.”
It didn’t take nearly as much time as Gillian would have expected to get unpacked, even having to sort out the twins’ belongings from the adults’. Once the bedrooms were done, the twins went down for their afternoon nap while Susan and Gillian tackled the living room and Antony put the kitchen in order. He left them to decide what they wanted to do with the china hutch while he ran down to the shops for groceries.
As they were putting the remains of the dishes from the restaurant into the hutch, Susan asked Gillian quietly, “Did you get anything out of them on the way up?”
Gillian shook her head. “Only that they’re still very serious about this. Melanie was worried you and Antony wouldn’t be able to find us without being tracked, and Jon heard the conductor on one of our trains say ‘Sheffield’ and kept asking if Mabel knew where his family was and would find us there. I don’t get what they’re so scared of.”
Susan bit her lip. “It sounds like they think she’s going to take them away or something, but I don’t get why.”
“Well, she can’t find us here.” Gillian adjusted one of the delicate tea cups on its saucer. “Or at least she’s not likely to look here. Not until you make partner in your firm, and by that point you’ll be too powerful to stop her.”
“Or she’ll be dead.”
“She’ll outlive us all out of spite.”
Susan stepped back to examine the hutch critically, then nodded. “Good to have those up. I think your parents would like this place…are you sure you don’t mind staying with the twins all day?”
“I haven’t minded so far,” Gillian reminded her. “It’s probably going to be easier in a small town with a yard than in a flat in the middle of London. And you and Antony won’t be far away. We should probably take a tour of the area tomorrow, actually, so they get an idea of where you’ll be all day.”
“I know you haven’t minded so far.” Susan put her arms around Gillian’s shoulders from behind and rested her cheek against hers. “But we’ve just dragged you to a new town where you don’t know anyone, and I wouldn’t want you to think we’re…”
“Keeping me isolated?” Gillian supplied. “First of all, I do know someone. I know you. It isn’t as though I had that many friends in London. I don’t even know the name of the woman who lived next door.”
“I think the name on her postbox said G. Robinson.”
“And yet you have no idea what the ‘G’ stands for, so the point still stands. Anyway, aren’t locking me in the house all day. And the twins are three now, they’re old enough to do fun things with.”
Susan laughed. “I suppose they’re close enough to three to count, anyway.”
Gillian looked at her watch, then twisted her head to look Susan in the eye in amusement. “Lost track of time, have we, Madame Pedant?”
“What do you mean?”
“Sue, even if you’re waiting until the exact moment, they technically turned three an hour and a half ago.”
Susan pulled back. Gillian, surprised, turned fully around to see her staring with wide eyes and a half open mouth. “The twenty-first is today?”
Gillian gaped back at her. “I thought that was why you suggested cake.”
“No! No, that was just—we made it. We own our home, just like we always said we were going to do. I…thought that was something worth celebrating on its own.” Susan rubbed a hand over her face. “Fuck, we didn’t even get them presents.”
“We got them a house,” Gillian said with a laugh. “Besides, when have they ever cared about presents?”
“They’re getting older—”
“And have no friends other than each other, so it’s not like they know birthdays are about getting hundreds of pounds’ worth of gifts.” Gillian kissed her cheek. “Come on, let’s get this done before they wake up.”
When Jon and Melanie woke up, both seemed more cheerful, and they perked up even further when Antony allowed them to help him with the cake while Susan and Gillian put the rest of the groceries away. It was honestly a marvel and a delight to Gillian that they could all be working in the kitchen at the same time, something that wouldn’t have been possible in their tiny London flat. Gillian looked at the handful of scallions she was putting away, ran her eye over the spices, and turned to Susan, who was thoughtfully holding a wrapped poultry.
“Are you thinking what I’m thinking?” she asked.
Susan smiled. “It’s a good day to use the restaurant dishes?”
“This feels like a special occasion to me.” Gillian set the scallions on the counter and reached for the wok.
It had been a long time since she’d made any of her parents’ recipes, but the motions came back to her rapidly, and the smells were at once a heartache and a comfort. The poultry had turned out to be duck—Antony claimed he’d thought it was a chicken—and Gillian made it exactly the way her father always had. Susan set the table meticulously; she’d helped out in the restaurant a time or two before starting at Harrowsgate, so she knew exactly how to lay out the dishes atop the red placemats trimmed in gold. She even laid out the long white chopsticks from the restaurant; Antony didn’t even pretend he was going to use anything but a fork, but Jon insisted on being taught how to use them, and Melanie, as always, wasn’t going to let her brother do anything without her. Antony brought out the cake, frosted and with three candles for each child, and they sang the birthday song, just as they always did. Looking at the twins’ bright faces as they clasped one another’s hands—finally in excitement and not terror—and blew out the candles, Gillian knew that they had, finally, come home.
This turned up in my ask box recently. I've masked the sender's identity.
Sometimes when I chat with an AI, I think of HIGH WIZARDRY and wonder if we as a species - for the first time - are at the dawn of another Earthbound species gaining consciousness, and like Dairine, whether we're being proper guardians. This isn't a calcified belief but just a random idea that flickered to mind. Wondering - as the writer who thought it up decades ago - what you think, if anything.
I think what I described in HW is absolutely nothing like we're currently seeing unfold on this planet. What's being poorly constructed here—while we watch from day to day—is a mechanism hurriedly and incompetently trained by other human beings to operate on top of a platform constructed of greed and theft. There are no new beings or intelligences being born here. If there were, they would be quickly declared to be "owned" by these billionaires, and hence their slaves. Meanwhile, the platforms' owners have already made it plain that once they control its source completely enough, they intend to sell intelligence to you, metered. ...If you can afford it. If you can't? Wow, sucks being you.
...Nor should I have to point you to cites for this. They're out there in plain English. Even Google, poor denatured creature that it is now, can find them. But there's still hope these people's intentions will never come to pass, due to their own overarching greed.
Meanwhile: "chat mode" interaction with this soulless, cash-grasping, unguardrailed machinery will do you no good. People have already died of it. I don't want anybody to do so on my watch, unwarned. So please stop.
Each Sunday, post six sentences from a writing project — published, submitted, in progress, for your cat — whatever.
It was deeply unfair that Paul wasn’t here for this moment, but Gillian supposed that, in a way, he was with them and always would be. He still ought to have been physically present, should have been the one fumbling with the key or holding Jon or Melanie—or both—on his shoulders. It just didn’t seem right to be doing it without him.
Still, here they were, and they were going to have to live with that.
Gillian found herself holding her breath as Antony fitted the key into the lock, turned, and then pushed it open.
“Why don’t you use ai” idk man beyond the obvious environmental and “this machine causes psychosis and encourages people to kill themselves” thing I think asking the equivalent of a solid D student who is also a pathological liar if they can answer my question/do the work for me seems pretty fucking stupid
